French fries are prepared by deep fat frying fresh or "par-fried" potato strips. A major drawback associated with deep fat frying is handling the hot frying oil. Baking the par-fries in an oven avoids this hot frying oil problem. However, there are some major problems associated with state of the art oven-finished French fries. One of the major problems is that a high quality French fry that tastes deep fried is difficult to consistently duplicate in an oven. In other words, a reliable process for making high quality deep fat fried-like oven finished French fries is heretofore unknown. Current oven-finished French fries are generally too limp and soggy or too dry and tough. High quality deep fat fried French fry has a moist interior surrounded by a crisp yet tender outer surface or crust.
It has now been surprisingly discovered that high quality French fries can be prepared quickly and reliably by a specific process comprising baking prebake fries in an oven.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a process for making high quality deep fat fried-like French fries in an oven. It is another object of the present invention to provide a fast food process for quickly finishing frozen par-fries in an oven. It is yet another object of the present invention to provide improved tasting high quality deep fat fried-like oven-finished French fries. Other objects of the present invention will become apparent in view of the following description.